Many eulogizers have prefaced their obits with “love him or hate him…,” but that’s not quite right. You both loved and hated Christopher Hitchens, as even when he wasn’t on your side—and even when he was on your side, yet still being a smug prick about it—you had to admire his tenacity and envy his eloquence. He was the best kind of intellectual: a brave one. (Also, one with whom you’d like to have a drink or three.) And our world is now far stupider without him.
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Sean O’Neal puts it nicely in The AV Club. In the end and at the end, Hitchens made me feel braver about most things, and especially non-existence, than any sermon ever could. That is all. (via areasofmyexpertise) Impossible for me to put it any better myself. |
